1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to virtual machines, and more specifically, to a method and apparatus of assigning virtual machine resources.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a climax of virtual machines and virtualization technology has been set off in the field of computer applications. For virtual machines, virtualization technology is an assembly of the technologies of designing virtual computers. Virtualization technology can enlarge the volume of hardware and simplify the reconfiguration process of software. For example, the virtualization technology of a CPU can simulate multiple CPUs working in parallel using one single CPU and allow multiple operation systems to simultaneously work on a platform, and the applications can operate in spaces independent of each other without influencing each other, in order to significantly improve the work efficiency of the computer. Especially in the environment of cloud computing, it is necessary to provide on-demand computing for individuals and enterprises. Normally, cloud computing is considered to involve the following levels of service: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). Because virtualization technology has the ability for on-demand configuration and dynamic migration, it becomes the key to achieve dynamicity and scalability for cloud computing. Major corporations and business organizations are beginning to use virtualization technology to cut down the number of physical machines needed which lowers costs and reduces energy and space requirements. In the meantime, however, virtual machine assign technology presents challenges to data backup.
According to the prior art, when a user makes a request for virtual machine resources, service providers will create a new virtual machine with a base image for the user. When the user logs out from the virtual machine, the entire virtual machine needs to be backed up as a whole, which includes the operating system, application software and user data. However, it takes a long time and a large amount of space to backup the entire virtual machine as well as a long time to restore it. This costs service providers more storage resources and more time. Accordingly, users also need to pay more for storage resources.
Therefore, it is necessary to provide an efficient virtual machine resource assign mechanism.